Sunday, March 10, 2013

Is feminism unraveling before our eyes? Or is it just
wishful thinking to imagine that women have finally seen through the feminist con
game.

The recent kerfuffle over Marissa Mayer’s ban on
telecommuting at Yahoo!, coupled with the negative reactions to Sheryl Sandberg’s
new book have led some feminists, like Hanna Rosin and Tracy Moore to declare
that perhaps feminism, in Moore’s phrase, “may be nearing her (sic) expiration
date.”

If so, the reason might be that feminism is sending out
mixed messages. Or else, that it is speaking out of both sides of its mouth. Perhaps, it has gotten caught speaking with forked tongue.

Such is the conclusion of Leslie Bell’s book on the hookup
culture. Salon announces breathlessly that this is the book that it has been
waiting for, and that may be true for people who live under a rock, but
frankly, if you are looking for reliable information about and cogent analysis of the hookup culture, you would do much better to
read Susan Walsh’s blog, Hooking Up Smart.

While Walsh often reports on well-researched
studies, Bell interviewed twenty women who had nothing in common and then called it
a sample. Of what, we can only wonder?

Bell should have limited herself to her own theory, because
it does have merit.

She posits that feminism has been sending out mixed
messages. It has not provided women clear guidance about how to conduct their
lives. One of the first requirements of an incipient culture is to set out
rules and guidelines so people will know what they need to do in order to
remain a member in good standing of the cult.

If feminism’s messages are contradictory, then anything can
be a feminist act. But then, there is no such thing as a feministically correct
action. Good bye, feminism.

Women are told to “live it up” in their twenties, but they
also:

…spend
their twenties hearing gloomy forecasts about their chances of marriage if they
don’t marry before thirty, and their chances of conceiving a baby if they don’t
get pregnant before thirty-five.

Bell summarized her view in an interview:

Well,
they have a few different messages coming in, like “your 20s should be a decade
that’s all about having as many sexual experiences as possible, diverse sexual
experiences with diverse partners; in fact, that’s the way you figure yourself
out, but at the same time you better temper that by making sure that it doesn’t
go over a certain number.” At the same time, in terms of relationships,
they’re getting messages like, “You really shouldn’t settle down. This is not a
time to be in a committed relationship because you need to really put your
efforts into education and career advancement and a relationship is gonna take
time from that, but you better make sure you’re married by the time you’re 30
because your biological clock is ticking and the pool of men is gonna
decrease.” So there’s just a huge range of messages out there. It’s also an
unprecedented time, historically, to have this decade for highly educated young
women who aren’t necessarily expected to be getting married and having
children.

These messages involve one’s life plan. Women who try to
follow them find themselves neither here nor there… lost. So they try to
clarify the precepts by removing the contradiction. They decide that they must choose
one or the other, career or relationship, good sex or committed love.

On the other hand, feminism has always defined one principle clearly: defer marriage and childbearing while developing a career.

I don’t know whether Bell discusses the issue in her book—I haven’t
read it—but clearly women will do better in both their marriage and careers if they reject the feminist label.

This leads us to Amanda Hess’s intriguing review of Sheryl
Sandberg’s new book, Lean In. According to Hess, Sandberg is sending out every
kind of mixed message, thus providing poor guidance for young women.

Hess summarizes Sandberg:

Sandberg
encourages women to fake confidence in the workplace by investing in “an hour
of forced smiling” or by “assuming ‘a high-power pose.’ ” Then again, women
would do best to communicate “authentically.” Women shouldn’t be afraid to cry
on a colleague’s shoulder at an emotional time, she says. Then again, “research
suggests” that “it is not a good idea to cry at work.” Women shouldn’t be
afraid to advocate for flexible work hours to handle family commitments. Except
that “employees who make use of flexible work policies are often penalized.”
Women “need to shift from thinking ‘I’m not ready to do that,’ to thinking ‘I
want to do that, and I’ll learn by doing it.’ ” But then again, men are
promoted based on their potential while women are promoted based on their past
accomplishments. Except that “a woman who explains why she is qualified or
mentions previous successes in a job interview can lower her chances of getting
hired.”

First of all, in comparison to most of the messages that Bell
isolates, these are tactical, not strategic. They are not mixed messages as
much as they are tactics to help a woman to negotiate a male workplace without denying that she is a woman.

On those points, Sandberg is surely correct. And yet, however much
she would like to make herself into a feminist heroine, Sandberg did not get to
where she is by following the feminist script.

She got ahead by working hard at her job, not by sacrificing her job to make a point.

Sandberg did not spend her time militating against sexism in
the workplace. She did not insist that she was just like the other guys. She
recognized that women are different, that they behaviors are judged differently
and that she could work with it. Sandberg succeeded as a woman, not as a feminist.

Tracy Moore grasps the point, but she insists on making it a
feminist issue. In truth, Sandberg does too. They are both wrong on that score,
but they are both right in evaluating how Sandberg got ahead in the high tech
world.

In Moore’s words:

We are
often uncomfortable with women who achieve in male-dominated fields because
they tend to minimize or maximize gender in such a way that can feel
contradictory to the aims of feminism, and they often distance themselves from
the term. But to succeed among men you must play the game they devised. Women
who prove they can win this way are advancing feminist goals. The kind that
change men's perceptions of what women are actually capable of. This is what
got women into combat. But the win, in my view, isn't remotely diluted if those
women aren't self-identifying feminists. And perhaps not requiring such a rigid
view of what it means to be "one of us" — and I do identify as a
feminist — would invite more people to this party.

Perhaps women who identify as feminists are distressed by
Sandberg’s book because she is a woman first and a feminist second. Or perhaps
they believe that she is a latecomer who has adopted the feminist label as a
marketing ploy to sell a book.

For the record, Sandberg has been highly supportive of
Marissa Mayer’s decision to ban telecommuting at Yahoo! But Mayer admits that
she is a feminist, while Sandberg appears to be a FINO, feminist in name only.

7 comments:

What do women want? Really want? This is an invalid question, IMHO; it should be what does this particular woman want, and how then should she go about getting there. Broad generalizations are poor advice, but that seems to be what feminist writing is all about.

My read on Tracy Moore's piece is that she, like many strategic feminists, recognizes that it has become necessary to switch gears, and try feminism by other means. The central problem is that men are catching on, and aging women are getting hit by the downsides of decades-worth of misandry and strident rhetoric. So it's time to wage peace instead. Examples include:

-- re-packaging feminism as "Men's Studies".

-- putting male professors out front of efforts to engage students in "dialogue" about masculinity.

-- shedding terms associated with feminism (i.e. "equality" and "empowerment") in favor of pseudo-masculine lingo like "resiliency", in an effort to convince men they're even more manly protectors and providers when they stay home with the kids so Superwoman can aim at the heights.

- shedding angry rhetoric, and claiming that helping men is a key feminist goal.

The power-seeking and spoils-producing goals of organized political feminism remain intact, of course. Only the tactics and strategy shift, due to the growing recognition that feminists need to keep men in the game and available to be taxed and otherwise exploited so women can get what they want for themselves.

There's always been gender-based pay discrimination in the workplace; it's just the absolute opposite of what most people believe. The fact is, women get paid the same for LESS work due to gender discrimination. In some cases, women also get paid MORE than men for the same amount of work.

I'll give you the holy grail of examples. Male and female tennis players receive equal prize money in grand slam tournaments, despite the fact that men play best of five set matches while women play best of three.

Now imagine this commonplace scenario in a grand slam final: two male players duke it out over a five set match, while the women's final goes for its maximum three sets. This means the women have played only three-fifths the amount of tennis that the men have played (60%). And the prize money is equal...

PROFESSIONAL FEMALE ATHLETES GET PAID THE SAME AMOUNT AS MALE ATHLETES FOR DOING ONLY 60% OF THE WORK THEY DO! WHY AREN'T THE FEMINISTS COMPLAINING ABOUT THIS! WHAT HAPPENED TO EQUAL PAY? AND IT DOESN'T END THERE. IMAGINE A FEMALE PLAYER WINNING IN STRAIGHT SETS (2 SETS) AND THE MEN PLAYING FIVE SETS. THE FEMALE PLAYERS STILL GET THE SAME PRIZE MONEY, DESPITE PLAYING JUST 40% OF THE TENNIS THE MEN HAVE PLAYED!

In the 2012 Australian Open, Victoria Azarenka received $2.3 million for winning the women's singles title. In doing so she played a total of just 15 GAMES in 7 tennis matches.

The men's 2012 Australian Open champion was Novak Djokovic, who also received $2.3 million but played 55 GAMES in 7 tennis matches.

These kind of disparities are an outrage. Male players are clearly working harder than the women and therefore deserve more money. This is also disenfranchising for the crowds who pay to watch these events because it will artificially inflate ticket prices as female athletes are being paid a disproportionately large sum of prize money (compared to male athletes) in relation to to the amount of revenue that they are actually generating for tournament organisers.

Now obviously the above is only a specific example in a professional sport. BUT I assure you that this same principle (women getting paid more for the same amount of work, or the same for LESS work) is actually apparent in MANY PROFESSIONS AND MANY FIELDS. Other fields where I have been exposed to this FIRST HAND are the police force and the military.

The whole concept of men being paid more is nothing but a feminist fairy tale.

I am an American man, and I have decided to boycott American women. In a nutshell, American women are the most likely to cheat on you, to divorce you, to get fat, to steal half of your money in the divorce courts, don't know how to cook or clean, don't want to have children, etc. Therefore, what intelligent man would want to get involved with American women?

American women are generally immature, selfish, extremely arrogant and self-centered, mentally unstable, irresponsible, and highly unchaste. The behavior of most American women is utterly disgusting, to say the least.

This blog is my attempt to explain why I feel American women are inferior to foreign women (non-American women), and why American men should boycott American women, and date/marry only foreign (non-American) women.

I encourage ALL American men to NEVER MARRY American women, and date/marry only foreign (non-American) women.

Tens of millions of American men have had their lives completely destroyed by American women through the following crimes:

1. False rape accusations (it has been proven that up to 80 percent of rape accusations are FALSE)

2. False domestic violence (DV) charges (same as above, and up to 40 percent of domestic violence victims are MALE, with their female partners INITIATING the violence)

3. False sexual harassment charges

4. Financial destruction of men in divorce courts through alimony and support payments (women get up to 95 percent of their ex-husband's income and savings, as well as the house, car, etc)

5. Emotional destruction of men by ex-wives who have stolen their children from them and forbidden the fathers from having custody or contact with their own children

6. Divorced dads who commit suicide as a result

A few more reasons to stay away from American women?

-25 percent of American women take psychiatric drugs for mental illnesses. -25 percent of women under the age of 30 have at least one STD. -85 percent of divorces in America are INITIATED by women, thus women are responsible for the vast majority of divorces. -70 percent of criminals in America were raised by single mothers, thus feminism is responsible for most crime in America. -The majority of child molestation, child abuse, and child murder in America is done by WOMEN.-American women are NINE TIMES more likely to murder their own children than the biological father

Another thing I noticed, is that whenever you bring up the topic of American men marrying asian women in front of an American woman, she will make some racist and hateful comment about asian women, calling them "slaves" or "mail order brides". My question is this: If American women are so "independent", "confident", "strong", and "empowered" like they claim to be, why do they feel threatened by Asian women? Why are American women so jealous towards Asian women? The real reason is this- Asian women are 1000 times superior to American women, and any American man who has dated/married an Asian woman will tell you this.

If you want to get married, find a nice foreign girl from Asia, or South America, or Russia/Eastern Europe. DO NOT MARRY AN AMERICAN WOMAN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!

Over 50 percent of American women are single, without a boyfriend or husband; so the fact is most American men no longer want to marry American women. Let these worthless American women grow old living alone with their 10 cats.

American women are living in their own pathetic little fantasy world, where they think they are a perfect little princess. Sorry, but you are NOT a perfect little princess.

I could understand your comments, to some degree, if they were aimed at feminists and feminism, but blaming all American Women is a bit of overkill. Suffice it to say that most American Women are not feminists.Having spent two years traveling all over Southeast Asia I can also understand the fascination with Asian women. They almost always have a ready smile, there is an exotic quality about them and they generally are very easy to get along with as people.You will find that if one watches any number of foreign films, especially out of Asia, that men and women have exactly the same problems.There does seem to be a racial, sexual, et al component to women's actions, but that does not change from culture to culture in my experience.A "shotgun" approach tends to scatter and miss the real target. It is a fact that in this country father's rights suffer from a judicial system, and a government for that matter, that thinks it is the "Daddy" to these poor defenseless children which does seem the ultimate bigotry to both males and females. Far better to enlist women in one's cause than to make enemies of them. Again, most woman are pretty nice people and probably share the same concerns in the long run.Feminism has turned into the disease not women themselves.

John Rambo, your generalization of American women is just as bad as any Feminist generalization of men.There are good women in the US, there are bad women. There are good men. There are bad men. There are men that want Asian women so that they can treat them absolutely like dirt and the Asian women jsut take it and be thankful for their ticket into the US. There are men that fall in love with any foreign woman simply because they seem to "fit." And they make it work for the next 50 years. But to say that no American man should date any American female? As an american female who has always been faithful (although I've been cheated on twice by "good men" swearing fidelity to multiple women who knew nothing about each other and all thought we were on track with this "perfect American family man" to marriage.)I remain the non-feminist female, faithful and low "n" knowing that there are good American males out there (or, perhaps a foreign man, I'm not against that, if that is who I am meant to be with)I agree with Dennis -- both men and women in the U.S. have the same fundamental problem. We have a hard time separating the players/manipulators from the good/true ones. Those few on both sides are ruining it for the rest of us who don't want to be playing games. We don't want to rack up multiple partners in pursuit of the "one" to spend the rest of our lives with. We don't want to be manipulated, lied to, cheated, swindled, used, misled, or otherwise wronged. We understand that honest hurt will come from the honest pursuit, and accept this hurt as a risk for the greater reward of the longer-term gain we know exists...Feminists are ruining it for men.Players/@s&h*les are ruining it for women...